


noche y agua

by iimpavid, scarebeast



Series: transmogrification [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Psychic Abilities, Suspension Of Disbelief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 01:19:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15546432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarebeast/pseuds/scarebeast
Summary: He needed only clutch Will to him-- smelling of hunting sweat and the unscent of cheap soap-- and allow it.





	noche y agua

**Author's Note:**

> All the love and attention to [ It_MightBe_Love](https://archiveofourown.org/users/It_MightBe_Love/pseuds/It_MightBe_Love) for helping us beta this monstrosity.

####  **Day 1 - March 18**

The air smelled of sea and blood -- iron and sediment and salt and lichen and wet granite-- and it swelled with an inexorable drumbeat overlaying the slightest dissonant thread. A tension that had risen and now plummeted into freefall. The sound could remain suspended on the chill winds of the Atlantic, buffeting the cliffs of the mind for eternity without resolution.

He needed only clutch Will to him-- smelling of hunting sweat and the unscent of cheap soap-- and allow it.

After that the water was cruel.

There was not the barest chance to draw breath. Dizzy in the dark water, Hannibal sought the undertow. It would carry them out and away from the doom of the cliffs' base. Away from prying eyes.

Will struggled in a fit of animal panic-- but only just. Hannibal clamped a hand over Will’s mouth and nose, bruise hard, to stop him breathing in the water and stayed his course. Will was weak with blood loss and shock and he softened easily. He was ready to drown.

Fortunately for him, Hannibal had no such moral obligations.

Riding the current with a body that had found its limits-- distantly, Hannibal cataloged these new weaknesses to be remedied-- he could not feel his extremities.The black beneath the water greyed at the edges from lack of oxygen. And it greyed near the surface, too, under the rising sun.

Hannibal broke the surface at an intersection of waves, gasping. The body was greedy for air and its first rush was euphoric. He removed his hand from Will's face and thought, giving in to the hope, that he had indeed felt Will's ribcage expand above water despite the limpness of his body. Open water was neither the time nor the place to check vitals.

He swam perpendicular to the rising sun and after a time that bowed and contracted beyond determining he could see shore. The beach was devoid of life except for a handful of gulls swooping lazily overhead and hungry plovers dashing out into the receding waves. It was composed mostly of gravel and sharp-edged tide pools and Hannibal lost no small measure of skin to these as he clambered ashore, on hands and knees, with Will across his shoulders. He collapsed sideways but was careful, so careful, to keep Will's head falling onto the rocks. A head injury at this point would only exacerbate the rest.

Lying supine with Will tucked into his chest, Hannibal allowed himself to feel for Will's pulse with fingers weak and stiff from cold. Will's carotid pressed back against his fingertips, giving soft, slow, steady resistance.

Hannibal stared into the sky and breathed.

Francis’ bullet had lanced straight through the right quadrant of his abdomen. He couldn't smell much beyond the blood seeping from the bullet wound in his abdomen. It was already hot to the touch. He estimated there was only a slight likelihood that he wouldn't die of sepsis, regardless of how intact his intestines might be. The fact that his liver remained whole was nothing short of miraculous. Every muscle in his body was growing tight, concentrated mostly in his torso, suggesting broken ribs, bruised kidneys. Thanks to dear Francis-- who had grown much less shy in the positive influence of good company-- he would be urinating blood for weeks to come.

It was a shame, perhaps the greatest, that he had only managed a single mouthful of him. Hannibal could taste the ghost of the pinot noir he and Will had been meant to share, lingering on his soft palate around the salt and detritus of the ocean. It would not have paired well with the raw trachea of The Great Red Dragon but Hannibal thought he would have been willing to suffer through it.

Hannibal willed his muscles to contract in an effort to force his body upright so that he might find some way to drag Will away from their current exposed location. His body for the first time in his life, denied him: it was as if he were cast in lead.

The sun had broken the horizon at last and the sky above stretched, cloudless blue.

* * *

 

The memory was vivid: the world tilting as he ran on legs that were beginning to grow too long to be managed and the ruins of the Lecter hunting lodge reeling out of frame as the floor, carpeted in yew leaves and larch needles, rose up to meet him. Hands flung forward in a late-learned reflex. Jarring impact a few inches too soon. The meat of his hand stuttering downward under his weight, skin stretching impossibly then popping all at once, pierced by a line of nails, each set an inch apart. Under the rubble of the collapsed lodge, the culprit: a loose board full of such nails, small and dull and rusted.

His tutor, Matis, was unconventional. The man firmly believed that a boy of ten should be permitted to run rampant according to his whims when lessons permitted and so here they were, studying decay and the life cycles of insects, in the forests far from the castle.

Hannibal knelt, staring at his hand. He lifted it, the rotted board breaking without pulling the nails from his flesh. He bled sluggishly, a trickle from the juncture of his ring and middle fingers to the base of his palm, trickling with gravity to stain the cuff of his shirt.

“What’s this, now Hannibal, are you well?” Matis squatted down beside him, sounding jovial, settling one heavy hand on his shoulder. He was young and strong, more than able to keep up with his charge, and possessed of soft hazel eyes. His radical ideas did not stop at education; he was a subversive. Hannibal knew his parents appreciated Matis' passion for— and this seemed strange to him at the time— Helsinki.

“Yes.” Hannibal showed Matis his hand, the nails through it, the board clinging to his palm with blood and splinters.

Matis paled. “I— We— Hannibal, you need to see a doctor, right away—”

Hannibal blinked at his distress. “It feels fine.”

“No, Hannibal, don’t touch it. Leave it alone until—”

He took hold of the wood still flat against his left palm and pulled. The nails slipped from his hand with a feeling of suction and the softest sound, wet like a lick of the lips.

Matis fainted.

Hannibal dropped the board with its nails and walked back to their campsite alone, dripping blood from his relaxed palm.

* * *

 

The stench of wet dog overwhelmed even the suggestion of other scents and Hannibal would not realize that he needed to be grateful for this-- not until raw fish, industrial dog food, unclean toilet bowl water, and mucus had his eyes watering. The dog licked at his face, presumably fond of the blood on it. Blindly, he grasped and found the dog’s muzzle, pinching its jaw hard so it bit its own cheeks as it tried to shake away from him. The dog whined and jerked and backed away.

A man’s voice laughed, warm and fond, “Holly! What’s’at you got? Another crab?”

The gravel beneath them was dry and warm and dark clouds gathered in the south, thunderheads bringing a cold wind. The burning sensation in his skin could either be sunburn or infection. The tide had not yet come in again. The dog, a retriever mutt by Hannibal’s bleary-eyed estimation, barked and bounded away— and doubled back to where he laid with Will limp against him.

Limp, not stiff with rigor mortis. And, with some investigation, still breathing with a weak and fluttering pulse. In the absence of equipment for a blood transfusion and without blood to spare, Hannibal would need to feed him organ meats. Liver. Heart.

Will’s gun was waterlogged and it was the irrational impulse that made Hannibal lever himself upright— his arms trembled under his weight with a hateful exhaustion— and pull it from the holster at the back of Will’s trousers. The dog shied away at the quick movement. It would misfire if he tried it now and it would likely never fire again. Hannibal blinked at it then at the dog again and toward the voice of the man. A hat— mariner-styled cap in corduroy— appeared at the top of his vision. The man it belonged to was old but well-kept and his beard implied a certain measure of luxury. Outside of his windbreaker he was dressed for unseasonable warmth in cargo shorts. He carried a bucket that was, presumably, full of fish.

“Hey, there, Holly, what's— Oh my god— are you alright?”

Hannibal’s throat was too dry to speak. He raised Will’s gun level with the fisherman’s head and squeezed the trigger.

The rapport surprised him and his shot went wide, catching only the side of the man’s head. The spray of scalp, skull, and brain up against the sun was vaguely reminiscent of Gentileschi; high contrast in shadow, vibrant, fluid. He fell to the gravel in a heap, twitching and trying to speak. The dog fled.

Hannibal ate the fish raw and struggling— they had spilled out of their bucket much closer to him than the man had-- and for many minutes all he knew was to assuage his hunger.

It was the final stillness of the man that drew Hannibal’s attention again as he sucked meat from the fishes’ fine bones. According to the contents of his wallet, his name was Bellamy Reymes. According to his choice of clothing, he did not live far.

The wind off the ocean took on a chill. There would be rain before the day was out.

He wrapped Will in Bellamy’s jacket. On the third try he only just managed to wrestle Will, unconscious and uncooperative as he was, into a fireman’s carry. The hike of the beach, he was certain, would be long.

* * *

 

Bellamy Reymes drove a compact car— new, unremarkable, smelling not at all like fish— and lived, alone, less than five miles north of the beach. He was a recent retiree. A plaque commemorating some 50 years’ worth of work for as local sheriff held pride of place on the mantle. Hannibal dragged them past it and into the nearest bathroom, laying Will out in the bathtub and turning on the shower. They would need, before anything else, to be clean.

A search beneath the bathroom cupboards turned up no isopropyl alcohol or bandages. He fainted twice finding the linen closet.

The rain began. It would keep the meat in the car chilled— hopefully chilled enough until he could butcher it. His mouth watered at the prospect of fresh liver.

Fever took hold of him. Black and creeping.

It was fortunate that Bellamy Reymes had been diabetic. His insulin syringes were small but Hannibal made do, dismantling them. Their wounds needed to be flushed by any means necessary.

He stitched Will’s chest closed with fishing line and a dull sewing needle. Could only pack and bandage the wound through his own side; he did not have the strength to lever himself from the floor to the bathroom counter and its large mirror nor did he have the flexibility left to twist and stitch his own back.

The wound through Will’s cheek, he left for last.

With gentle fingers he felt through Will’s mouth— soft, slack, stained with blood— to the outside of the wound, divining the knife’s path in reverse. It had gone first through cheek, then chipped zygomatic bone, then broken through molars and scored Will’s gums deep.

He flushed it again with isopropyl alcohol, careful to cradle Will’s head so he could not swallow it. There were broken pieces of tooth that would need to be removed.

He pressed Will’s mouth closed then listened to his breathing, bending close enough that his ear was nearly pressed to Will’s ruined cheek— the sound was faint and steady through his nose. The breath did not whistle. If there was no fistula between his mouth and sinuses, if he survived the shock and trauma, he would be less prone to catastrophic infection and he would heal without the need of a reconstructive surgeon.

Hannibal’s stitches in Will’s cheek were so small as to nearly be invisible in the right light. He packed Will’s cheek with clean gauze and taped more the outside of the wound.

He half-carried, half-dragged Will from the bathroom to the sofa. It was inadvisable, medically-speaking, but he did not want Will to be where he could not see him.

The house was full of the detritus of a recent acquisition. Bellamy Reymes had been an impulsive one indeed to go fishing without finishing his unpacking.

The insidious cold— either the fault of the rain and poor insulation or the fever— had him digging first through a box labeled “Clothes”. Its contents were not only clothes but shoes, books, and the contents of a medicine cabinet that had accumulated for many years. Bellamy was, it seemed, the sort of imbecile who did not finish his antibiotics. How lucky for them. The trousers and sweater he found fit poorly; too short in the leg and too tight across the shoulders. The synthetic fibers caught in unpleasant ways against his skin. But they were warm and would fit Will better. Bellamy had a collection of some six boxes marked “Tools” in sloppy cursive. In the last of those, he found soft vinyl tubing; clear, meant to carry water.

Hannibal sat with it in his hands for several minutes. His pulse throbbed in his ears. He had gone clammy some time ago. This could very well be (he realized this with a foreign sensation his patients had described as anxiety) septic shock. The odds were in favor of Francis' bullet laying waste to his intestine, not missing it with surgical precision.

When he could stand without swooning, he limped to the kitchen to sterilize the tubing.

It was a herculean task to adjust Will to the appropriate angle with cushions and whatever miscellaneous bedding could be scavenged from their immediate surroundings. Hannibal sweated through it. And eventually found himself seated looking down at Will’s head, tilted back on the arm of the couch, cherubic in his unconsciousness. Pain had not yet reached his sleeping mind and his face was slack. The beginnings of fever lent him a glow that Botticelli might captured faithfully.

The sterilized vinyl was not rigid enough by half but, with time and coaxing, it slipped into Will’s esophagus. Hannibal washed antibiotics (azithromycin, 500mg, only 8 months out of date) and anti-inflammatories (naproxen, 600 mg, new) down into Will’s stomach with tepid water.

 

**Author's Note:**

> All of our medical knowledge comes from google and what we hope is rational conjecture based on anecdotal evidence. Suspend thy wicked disbelief. Tags will be updated on an episodic basis. Expect updates every week or two on Fridays.


End file.
